Written by Clem on
Saturday, December 6th, 2008 @ 6:51 pm | Main Topics

A little bit more than 8% of you are currently running Linux Mint 6 RC1 and you’re probably wondering how “stable” it is and how to upgrade it to the upcoming stable version. Well here’s some good news, it’s very stable and you can upgrade it with only two commands.

How stable is RC1?

RC1 is fit for usage. If you’ve got it installed, you don’t need to wait for the final release, you can already consider your system stable.

What’s missing in RC1 is the new Windows installer “mint4win” which only makes a difference for the liveCD, and a few bug fixes which you can get by “upgrading to stable”.

69 Responses to “Note to Mint 6 RC1 users”

great news guys
will it be possible to install mint via its windows installer on a machine where already two OS’s are – WinXP as a default OS and ubuntu installed via wubi? I mean, will installations of ubuntu and mint work side by side on one machine without problems?

Great work getting these updates out as well as attending to your non-linux activities.

Maybe I need to download/install RC1 again as I still have no audio with Skype and the name Felicia is still missing from the bottom left of my main window. I have the word “menu” [without the quotes], instead.

The rest appears to be working perfectly. Sorry about the negatives, don’t want to spoil the great work but I assume you realy want to know.

Ok I have install Xubuntu with wubi and Linux Mint XFCE CE with mint4win.
It did install ok, but the last one to be installed removes the other entry in windows boot manager.
You can edit the menu.lst to add the other install and both will work.

If you uninstall one of the 2 it removes the entry from Windows boot loader and you can’t boot into the one still installed.

For XP you can it’s simple to restore it to the boot manager.
I’m not sure how with vista though.

thanks merlwiz, so if I understand it correctly, neither wubi nor mint4win does not take in account that there could be already another OS installed (except from win xp), so you have to edit boot menu by hand to add/remove ubuntu/mint

hi,
I’ve been using Felicia Rc1 for couple weeks now and its awesome.
I had some problem here and there but made my ways on ggl to get my answers.

sometime its happens that some programs just freeze for couple seconds and its kind of irritating me. any idea of how to clean up and maintain a clean mint at all time? i do a lot of trial of different packages. the one i don’t like, i delete them and i want to know how to completely delete them.

Thanks for this great os. I run VMware workstation at works flawlessly.

I have no hurry.
I will wait for the final release (iso) though i consider this RC1 stable and very functional. Upgrade done.
In my opinion some bugs (minor ones) remain and need to be fixed.

Well guys, i do not want to spoil the party but i am not interested
in this new upgrade tool – mint4win but i am sure many Linux Mint
users will love it. I prefer a new fresh (clean) install.
Of course i hope without the using of this mint4win tool. A normal
installation by option.

whats the time frame the the stable release i know you say the rc1 is stable but i want to be have the fully done 6 release just give us a time frame is all i ask dont care if the time frame is a month away or 4 months

riedsonjm +1, I upgraded from Elyssa to Felicia last week. I burned the Mint6 RC1 CD, put back into my drive, restarted into live, then did the install, I told it to do a manual install, then told it to but the root directory over my previous one & NOT to reformat, then it asked me if I wanted to import Firefox & GAIM(Pidgin) settings, I told it yes, then it took less then 5 minutes to install, & when I took out the disk & rebooted my system was Mint6 with all of my Mint5 settings & most of my Mint5 programs. I then did these commands upgrading my system to Mint6 final. So I am very happy .

– I know that. Like Wubi for Ubuntu. (i did not like it) and i must confess i am not a fan of the using of Virtual Machines and installations through them. We don’t have a good mensuration of the
product we are speculating (here talkin’ about linux distros). All we can know is new features or anything else but the real performance, stability, installation, bugs etc., we can have a better approach to them with an installation on the hard drive. It is a personal opinion. Use of VMs for developers, enterprises, so on – OK!

Yep, i think mint4win is a value tool for Linux Mint and many users will really like it and another possibility of making linux Mint more known among windows users and tempt them to give to the linux Mint a chance. – mint4win will be better than Wubi, I beleive in you guys.

Hi guys, I installed a fresh Felicia a few days ago and everything is ok so far, but I’m getting a weird pause between when my wallpaper appears and my gnome-panel appears and the timer thingy gets stuck for a few seconds, not sure what’s causing it, anyone else have this?

Sweet, working on that right now! I’m so glad that I don’t have to do a clean install. Not that I would mind now that I have my stuff partitioned properly (with the help of the wonderful mint community!) Love this place, love this distro. So thankful for all your hard work.

I can’t believe how easy it has been to get Felicia up and running. I have been using it for several weeks now without a problem. I am a long time user of Linux and a fairly recent convert to Mint. I used Gentoo for years but Mint Linux is just light years ahead. I learnt a lot using Gentoo, however, these days I just want a stable workhorse and Mint is certainly that. Lots of great applications including multimedia and a great interface. Thanks for all the effort.

Well… How good is this Mint 6 RC1..?? I will tell you… Excellent.!!
My hard drive totally died on me last week so I looked for a live cd with all the codecs n plugins n flash already installed. This will see me through until I can afford a new one.
I have not had one problem with it since I popped the cd in the drive and booted it up.
Nice work very stable.

What about the issues with the wifi drivers and certain Dell computers that were fixed in Mint5, but broken again in Mint6? I know they are bugs that have come down from Ubuntu, but I’m wondering if they are fixed in the final release of Mint6.

Vista uses this beast of a command line utility to edit the boot manager. There is a GUI tool out there that graphically allows an admin to update the boot manager. It is not possible to directly edit the boot manager file since in Vista it is now encrypted, for whatever reason. Stupid Microsoft.

And were are those bugs fixes you promised Clem?! I really had an awfull experience with RC1, and in my opinion the choise to stick closer to Ubuntu was a mistake…to many bugs…especially in X.org. For me Felicia is UNUSABLE!!! Big disappointment after such a great distro Elyssa was…

I have been using Ubuntu from 7.04 through to 8.04 without any major problems. I discovered Mint last month. I have been using it without any issues at all for four weeks or so. Great distro, best around.

Brett,
I am using Mint on a Dell Inspiron 6400 and have not had any issues with drivers at all. Sound, wireless, graphics etc all work ‘Out of the box’.
Clem and co have done an excellent job with this distro…there are another few people at work intending to install very soon, word is spreading.

Thanks a lot for continuous upgrade of Mint. I’m running Mint since first days it appeared publicly – RC1 is a great step. Special note on great hardware compartibility and automatic recognition – network, video, sound etc. Among other L’xes I’m running (Mandriva 2009 PWP, Ubuntu 8.10, KNOPPIX, Solaris – I’m managing a Zoo) this is the one I’m using for my day-by day office and home work. I stopped using MS W’s a year ago at all and senced a difference. I’m free!

I had MINT 5 before and two weeks ago i started running mint 6. I works fine but it still has a few minor or not bugs. Unfortunately i have a DELL laptop and I can’t control the brightness of the computer without having problems (CPU at 100% and ….). I believe that it is the power management but it needs to be fixed.
Good job Clem and the Mint team, and I hope that the last few bugs will be fixed. Good job.

I made the switch to Linux from Windows about 4 months ago. I have no Windows partitions at all. I am totally switched over to Linux Mint and have loved every minute of it. Now I have gone from Mint 5 to Mint 6 and the backup tool is simply amazing. I backed everything up to an external drive, did a clean fresh load of Mint 6, and wow the restore of my backup worked perfectly. Windows never could do that, NEVER! You guys are awesome! Thanks for the good work!

Yeah, it isn’t every Dell that has a problem, but some of the laptops do. I’m running an Inspiron 1720 and with Mint4 my video, sound, wireless, and (if I remember correctly) my wired LAN didn’t work right. I had to wait for Mint 5 to fix this stuff. In the RC1 release, I was noticing that folks with the same hardware I have were having the same issues as we did in Mint 4 again. I know it traces back to Ubuntu and from there I believe it goes back to new changes in the 2.6.27 kernel that this version is using. I just know I’m not willing to upgrade to either Ubuntu 8.10 or Mint 6 until I know those problems are fixed. I’d be more willing to stay on Mint 5 and upgrade the Minttools and wait for Mint 7 than risk destabalizing the laptop that I use for all my school work (hell, it’s become my primary system since I put Mint 5 on it).

OK, built Mint 5 in Virtualbox in my relatively new [and now secondary!] HP Vista laptop, then changed the repositories in Intrepid and changed to the new Mint 6, did
aptitude update
aptitude dist-upgrade
and it took a long time [most of the day] but so far… it works!
Will try on my production box over the weekend, where I just have too much custom stuff [webcam driver, virtualbox with XP etc installed] to want to do a from-scratch fresh install and start over unless I absolutely have to…
Wish me luck!

And were are those bugs fixes you promised Clem?! I really had an awfull experience with RC1, and in my opinion the choise to stick closer to Ubuntu was a mistake…to many bugs…especially in X.org. For me Felicia is UNUSABLE!!! Big disappointment after such a great distro Elyssa was…”

—————–

Hope you have submitted a detailed bug report on the forum so they know you are having issues.

DELL INSPIRION 9100 (1st gen XPS) IT LOVES ELYSSA, TRYED THE NEW BABE, TOTAL GARBAGE, WENT BACK TO THE OLD BABE, DID THE COMMAND LINE FOR UPDATING ALL PKGS TO 6, WENT WELL, I THINK THE ENVY-NG ATI DRIVER TOOL HAS BEEN FIXED OR UPDATED, AS ALL THE COMPFIZ STUFF STARTED WORKING WHEN I DID A NEW INSTALL OF IT LAST WEEK…. IF YOU HAVNT UPDATED YOUR ATI DRIVER LATELY… ID RECCOMEND IT…..BUT I TOO WILL WAIT FOR 7…

i was [xubuntu] user and i think ill be again if olny one BIG bug wont be removed/solved in [LinuxMint]
i just put [Mint Linux] and did all updates to be ready for maximum stable using of it
and now im installing again couse in [Control Center] in [Simple CompizConfig] when i in [Accesability] pushed checkbox [Area Zoom] whole sistem chashed and no more starting
i did tryd again in Minux live pushing that again and whole sistem again crashed
so now im 3time in Lintux live and hoping to get answer in morning.. now its night here in latvia from where i am
Maybe i put better Mintux 5 ? Maybe Thats stable?
Withc version is mine? Milintux 6 RC1

@Libor,
I know what ure talking about. Please wait for either rc2 or if that doesn’t come, Stable. Then you need to just put your Ubuntu install on another Windows install or switch to one, then just burn your disk and then install Gnome-Mint(LINUX-MINT.main)b with mint/win.#
@Roger
Well the same with my Ubuntu and LinuxMint fresh, “mint” install. I just had to enable wl or Broadcom STA wireless adapter.